Jack Cardiff - Writer

Cinematographer and Director.
Nationality:
British.
Born:
Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, 18 September 1914.
Family:
Married; three sons.
Career:
Child actor from age four to fourteen. 1928—joined British

Jack Cardiff (left) with Geoffrey Unsworth

International as runner and general assistant; expert on color
photography by 1935; 1940s—made first films as cinematographer;
worked for Crown Film Unit during World War II; 1958—first film as
director,
Intent to Kill
; television work includes the mini-series
The Far Pavilions
and
The Last Days of Pompeii
, both in 1984.
Awards:
Academy Award, for
Black Narcissus
, 1947; Golden Globe, Directors' Guild of America and New York
Critics' awards, for
Sons and Lovers
, 1960; International award, American Society of Cinematographers, for
Outstanding Achievement, 1994.
Address:
c/o L'Epine Smith and Carney Associates, 10 Wyndham Place, London
W1H 1AS, England.

Colour in Clay
(Catling—short);
Border Weave
(Curthoys—short);
Out of the Box
(Bishop—short);
The Great Mr. Handel
(Walker) (co);
This Is Colour
(Ellitt—short);
The
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
(
Colonel Blimp
) (Powell and Pressburger)

1943

Scottish Mazurka
(Nieter—short)

1944

Western Approaches
(
The Raider
) (Jackson);
Steel
(Riley—short) (co)

1945

Caesar and Cleopatra
(Pascal) (co)

1946

A Matter of Life and Death
(
Stairway to Heaven
) (Powell and Pressburger)

1947

Black Narcissus
(Powell and Pressburger)

1948

The Red Shoes
(Powell and Pressburger);
Scott of the Antarctic
(Frend) (co)

Like Freddie Francis, Jack Cardiff made the transition from director of
photography to director in the 1960s and gradually drifted back to his old
job in the 1970s and 1980s, leaving behind him an interesting but not
especially successful body of directorial work, from the prestige of
Sons and Lovers
(for which, ironically, Francis won an Oscar for best cinematography)
through the trendy idiocy of
The Girl on a Motorcycle
(also known, in honor of Marianne Faithfull's fetishist
introductory scene, as
Naked under Leather
) to the grotesque mad-scientist melodrama of
The Mutations
(a horror movie a good deal freakier, funnier, stupider, and trashier
than Francis's run of professional and faintly stodgy contributions
to the genre). Otherwise, Cardiff the director seemed mainly there to
collect scraps from the table: allowed to finish
Young Cassidy
when John Ford fell ill, and doing what he could with the mismatch of Rod
Taylor and Julie Christie in a project that meant a lot to Ford and
nothing apparently to Cardiff; permitted to make in
The Long Ships
a sequel to
The Vikings
—a film he had photographed—and failing to match Richard
Fleischer's bold swashbuckling approach to the original; stepping
in to do additional sequences for
Satan Never Sleeps
, the ailing Leo McCarey's last film; stuck with the standing joke
of
Scent of Mystery
, a gimmick attempt to introduce Odorama to the cinema 20 years before
Polyester
, with various smells and perfumes pumped into the auditorium to coincide
with the on-screen action; and yet again unable to make Rod Taylor seem
charismatic in the cut-price Bond imitation
The Liquidator
, although Cardiff and Taylor both seem to have been uncharacteristically
enthused by
Dark of the Sun
.

Once the directorial doodles have been set aside, Cardiff has one of the
most impressive records of pictorial achievement in the cinema, starting
as a camera operator and second unit cameraman with Korda and the Archers
in the 1930s—working on
Knight without Armor
,
The Ghost Goes West
, the early Technicolor
Wings of the Morning
(Britain's first full-color film), and
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
before being promoted to director of photography with the documentary
Western Approaches
and the lavish, prestigious, slightly boring
Caesar and Cleopatra
. He first made himself noticed, however, with three color masterpieces
for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,
A Matter of Life and Death
,
Black Narcissus
, and
The Red Shoes
. Here, in an atmosphere of fantasy, violence, and eroticism, Cardiff was
allowed a very un-English lack of restraint, and came through with a
procession of images that go beyond the chocolate-box prettiness of
Technicolor into very dangerous areas indeed, especially in the striking
use of strong reds—the scarlet of Kathleen Byron's dress and
lipstick in
Narcissus
, the shoes themselves in
The Red Shoes
—and a knack for making unconventional beauties into screen
goddesses. Kim Hunter, a most unlikely candidate, looks extraordinary in
uniform in
A Matter of Life and Death
, and the later films find turbulent depths in the cool exteriors of
Deborah Kerr and Kathleen Byron, all the more disturbing since they are
supposed to be playing nuns, and Moira Shearer. Unsurprisingly, Cardiff
would later be called in to highlight the faces and figures of Ava Gardner
(
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
,
The Barefoot Contessa
), Audrey Hepburn (
War and Peace
), Marilyn Monroe (
The Prince and the Showgirl
), Sophia Loren (
Legend of the Lost
), Janet Leigh (
The Vikings
) and Leslie Caron (
Fanny
).

After his period with the Archers, Cardiff became a prestige international
director of photography, especially adept at American productions with a
European or period flavor.
Under Capricorn
, for Alfred Hitchcock, is labyrinthine and elegant, the Hollywood
Englishman calling upon some of the innovations of the Archers to
reinvigorate his Selznicked-to-the-ground studio style.
Pandora
, directed by the delirious Albert Lewin with unrestrained Ava and uptight
Flying Dutchman James Mason, is three degrees steamier even than
Black Narcissus
, to the point when its magic, eroticism, and monomania is almost, but not
quite, ludicrous.
The African Queen
, made in color under grueling conditions, is unfussy about its exotic
backgrounds, spirited in its action, and modestly competent when it comes
to keeping its unglamorized stars center screen and registering the
nuances of their performances. If some of the 1950s "big
pictures"—
The Magic Box
,
The Prince and the Showgirl
,
War and Peace
,
The Journey
,
The Brave One
—look stuffy today, that has more to do with the then-prevalent
ideas of "quality" than with any
inherent limitations in Cardiff's approach. And before temporarily
abandoning the camera for the megaphone, Cardiff did do his best for
The Vikings
, a still-underrated classic of the demented melodrama following up
Cardiff's work on
The Black Rose
and
The Master of Ballantrae
. Here, Cardiff captured Kirk Douglas walking on the oars, Ernest Borgnine
jumping into a pit of starving wolves, Tony Curtis ripping Janet
Leigh's dress so she can row better, and plenty of
Boys' Own
boat and swordplay.

Returning in the 1970s and 1980s as a photographer, Cardiff found himself
on familiar ground—swashbuckling and faraway places—with
Scalawag
,
The Prince and the Pauper
,
Death on the Nile
, and
Conan the Destroyer
, then perhaps recaptured some of the discomfort of
The African Queen
and sadomasochistic action man feel of
The Vikings
in
Rambo: First Blood, Part II
, in which he followed Stallone's glistening torso through mud,
blood, leeches, machine gun bandoliers, electric torture, and nonstop
jungle engagements. It was as if he had never been away.

—Kim Newman

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